Reunion 2012 - Attendee Profiles

Prof. Vipin Kumar (BE '77) Dist Professor & Data Mining ExpertProf. Vipin Kumar is recognized for his technical contributions to foundational
research in data mining as well as its applications to mining scientific data.
Prof. Kumar has made numerous significant and impactful contributions to a wide
range of core data mining areas including graph partitioning, clustering,
association analysis, high performance and parallel data mining, anomaly/change
detection and data driven discovery methods for analyzing global climate and
ecosystem data. Many of his papers on these topics are amongst the most highly
cited papers in data mining.

Prof. Kumar is also well-known for his pioneering research in the areas of high
performance and parallel data mining. In particular, his group was amongst the
first ones to introduce the concepts of dynamic load balancing (derived from his
earlier extensive work on the design of scalable parallel algorithms for
unstructured problems) to the parallel formulations of algorithms such as
Apriori and decision tree induction.

Prof. Kumar received the B.E. in Electronics & Communication Engineering
from the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee , India , the M.E. in
Electronics Engineering from Philips International Institute, Eindhoven ,
Netherlands , and the Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Maryland
at College Park.

He is currently William Norris Professor and Head of Computer Science and
Engineering Department at the University of Minnesota . Prof. Kumar is a Fellow
of ACM, IEEE, and AAAS, and a recipient of the 2009 Distinguished Alumnus Award
from the Computer Science Department, University of Maryland College Park, the
ICDM 2008 Outstanding Service Award, and the 2005 IEEE Computer Society's
Technical Achievement Award.

Sarvesh Mahesh (BE '82), Chief Executive Officer, Tavant Technologies, IncAs the Founder, President and CEO, Sarvesh is responsible for building the Tavant vision and guiding the company's strategy.Before
joining Tavant, Sarvesh was Director, Merchant Services at Amazon.com,
where he was responsible for building services for merchants to sell on
the Amazon platform.Sarvesh has served as Vice President of Customer
Solutions at Junglee and was responsible for operations, deployment,
customer service, and data acquisition for the Junglee Shopping Network
as well as the Junglee Jobs Network. Under his leadership Junglee
deployed co-branded sites with Yahoo, CNET, Zdnet, Go2Net, Washington
Post, Wall Street Journal and several other leading sites.He has also served as a Practice Director at Sybase Professional Services, managing their West Coast practice.Sarvesh holds a Bachelor's in Electronics and Communication Engineering from IIT Roorkee.

Hersh Kumar (BE '78), Philanthropist, Investor, Social EntrepreneurHersh Kumar heads the Shipra group of companies that has the distinction of running one of the largest private school systems in Houston. Shipra Group is also involved in real estate development and venture capital investments.

Hersh Kumar takes pride in creating one of the finest education systems that is benefiting thousands of children in India and USA. He started a charity foundation with his personal commitment of $20M to help the poor children in India. He is a graduate of IIT Roorkee (gold medalist, ’78) and a postgraduate (’82) of Wayne State University in Michigan. He lives in Houston suburb with his wife Rita Kumar and two children, Shipra and Akshay.

Aditya (Eddie) Nath, (BE '86) Chief Executive Officer. NexVu, InvestorAditya Nath has over
20 years of experience in building businesses and creating wealth for investors.
He is an expert in formulating winning business strategies and implementing them
through his unique style of leadership and unparalleled execution capabilities. He holds the Kellogg Management Institute (KMI) certificate in management
from the Kellogg School of Business and an MS in Engineering from the University
of Michigan after an Engineering degree from IIT Roorkee, India.Aditya has founded
several technology and consulting companies. Prior to founding Nexvu, Mr. Nath
was leading a successful IT and Business Process consulting business, which he
co-founded, with a team of over 400 consultants engaged in helping fortune 100
companies including Caterpillar, John Deere, ADM, State Farm, Navistar, and
Motorola.

Kamal Ahluwalia (BE '88), Chief Strategy Officer, Selectica IncKamal is the Chief Strategy Officer at Selectica, where he heads product strategy, product management, and innovation. He rejoined Selectica in 2011, and brings more than twenty years of experience driving global business success with a range of innovative technologies. Earlier in his career, Kamal's strategy consulting firm was acquired by Selectica and he became part of the leadership team that took the company public. Kamal has also held leadership positions at Oracle, Apple, RadioMail, Model N, Neev Labs, and golf courses where he is a bogey golfer with a tremendous upside.Kamal holds a Master of Science degree in Computer Science from Utah State, and a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from IIT Roorkee.

His focus has been leading business and IT transformation efforts for financial services, retail, and high-tech industries. Some of his pioneering work includes development of Global Straight Through Processing (GSTP) systems ... at State Street Bank, the development of asset allocation and financial planning products at Fidelity Investments, and the development of end-to-end logistics platforms for some of the world's largest retailers.

He served as Vice President of Global IT at Hewlett Packard, where he led global HP supply chain transformation efforts with a focus on process and systems standardization. He served as Chief Technology Officer of Manhattan Associates Inc. from 2003 to January 15, 2009. He served as Executive Vice President of Global Research & Development of Manhattan Associates Inc. from January 2008 to January 15, 2009. He was responsible for all of Manhattan Associates Inc. Research and Development Activities. He served as Senior Vice President of Development and Services for Transportation of Manhattan Associates Inc. from January 2005 to January 2008. He joined Manhattan Associates in January 2003. At HP, he led the development of market leading supply chain software solutions. He served as Senior vice president of Logistics.com from 2000 to 2002 and led the re-vamping of Logistics.com's transportation management, financial supply chain systems, business banking and management of electronic channels for the financial services industry.

From 1999 to 2000, Pervinder served as Chief technology officer and Senior Vice President of product and development for Politzer & Haney. From 1997 to 1999, he served as Vice President of Financial Transaction Management Development for State Street Corporation.

Pervinder holds an MBA from Boston University, a Master's degree (M.S) in Computer Science from Villanova University and a Bachelors of Science degree in Computer Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Rookie.

Ray Mehra (BE '66), CEO, Artha Investments, Investor, EntrepreneurGraduated in Mechanical Engineering from IIT Roorkee in 1966, Master degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Ray is the CEO of Artha Investments LLC. His strength is leadership, motivation and a record of producing high returns on investments in corporate entities a Group President and as owner CEO of businesses he has acquired and sold. He has thirty plus years of experience in Investing in real Estate. His expertise in finance and general management is a major asset to this team. Ray has a BS degree from IIT and a masters degree from University of Illinois, Urbana

Prior to this, Ray was the CEO of R Squared, Inc., a manufacturing business with plants in Illinois, Mississippi and Mexico with the focus on acquiring and consolidating OEM component suppliers in the industrial/commercial markets.

Prior to R Squared, Ray was the president of Sunbeam Health, a 200 MM manufacturer of scales for consumer and commercial markets, which was part of the larger consumer products company. During his tenure at Sunbeam, Ray was also responsible for 4 manufacturing operations in Mexico for two years, where he led 1100 employees and all aspects of its operations to improve its contribution margin by four percent points by reducing cost, improving quality and other productivity gains.

Ray also led an $80 million manufacturer of gas range components supplying to General Electric, Maytag, Amana; grew sales 35% and profits 100% during second year; general cash flow of over 10 million; produced RONA of 30 along with three successive record years. He is now focused on acquisition and consolidation of OEM component suppliers to the industrial/commercial markets like R&R Metal Craft Inc., r-Squared Systems, and Fox Tool Manufacturing Systems.

Ray is actively involved in the IITR alumni association and also currently heads the Midwest chapter of PAN-IIT. He is also on the board of PAN-IIT, North America. He has been instrumental in successfully hosting programs for IIT Networking meetings in the greater Chicago land area on a monthly basis. Ray is an avid tennis player and enjoys traveling and spending time mentoring friends and family. He lives with his wife Joyce in Naperville, a suburb of Chicago in Illinois.

Praveen Gupta (BE '78), CEO, Accelper Consulting, IncPraveen
Gupta has been recognized as a thought leader in areas of innovation and
excellence. He has developed Six Sigma Business Scorecard, the 4P model
of excellence, Breakthrough innovation (Brinnovation), and Stat Free
Six Sigma methods that have been translated and used worldwide.He
has authored several books including Business Innovation in the 21st
Century, Stat Free Six Sigma, Six Sigma Performance Handbook, and
Service Scorecard. Praveen is the founding Editor-in-Chief of
International Journal of Innovation Science, and writes a monthly
column, “Manufacturing Excellence,” in the Quality Magazine. Praveen
frequently speaks at conferences internationally.Praveen has worked
at Motorola and AT&T Bell Laboratories, and consulted with about 100
small to large size companies including CNA, Abbott Labs, Superior
Essex, Dentsply, Hexel, Experian, Sloan Valves, Weber Markings, Wayne
State (Ford), and Telular. Praveen taught Operations Management at
DePaul University, and Business Innovation at Illinois Institute of
Technology, Chicago. He has conducted seminars worldwide for over 20
years.Praveen holds a BSEE from IIT Roorkee, India, and a MSEE from
IIT Chicago, Illinois. He has been instrumental in setting up curriculum
in Business Innovation including Business Innovator certification at
Illinois Institute of Technology. Including the Professional Achievement
Award 2008 at IIT, three CEO Awards at Motorola for Six Sigma projects,
Motorola Engineering Award, Certified Master Black Belt, Professional
Engineer and ASQ Fellow.